Golden Museum

	The far upper Columbia River’s steamboat era lasted only thirty-four years from 1886 to 1920. It concerned two streams. It ranged from Golden on the Columbia up to Columbia Lake across Canal Flats and down the Kootenay to Jennings, Montana. This was a distance of over three hundred miles. The vessels were almost amphibian. Records show succession of “stovein” hulls, wrecks, sinkings, and groundings.
	Outstanding figures were Captain Frank Armstrong and William Adolph Baillie-Grohman. The latter was a big game hunter and this is the reason he came to the Rockies, to look for mountain goat and grizzlies. Baillie-Grohman was also interested in the construction of a diversion ditch from the Kootenay to the Columbia. The C.P.R. objected to this construction as they claimed it would flood the main line north to Golden. A compromise was made and the Baillie-Grohman Syndicate would construct a ship's canal with locks. The gates of the canal should be kept closed except to permit the passage of steamers or other craft.
	To lay out the history of the riverboats in the valley we need to go back a little further. In 1883, Mr. Baillie-Grohman was granted a concession by the B.C. government to divert the floodwaters of the Kootenay River into the Columbia, on the condition that he was to operate a steamer over the navigatable sections of the river and lake. Baillie-Grohman sent to England for a small cheap steamer named the Midge, but before he could get down to business, the Canadian Pacific Railway complained to the Canadian government that the diverson would flood the rail grades that they had along the Columbia, and as it turned out the B.C. government had no legal right to offer Baillie-Grohman such a concession.
	Baillie-Grohman moved to the spot, built a store and a sawmill. Work began and several hundred Chinese were employed. In 1889, the canal was finished. It was 6700 feet long by 45 feet wide and was equipped with one lock 150 feet long and 30 feet wide.
	During the six years while the Canal project was being argued, Capt. Armstrong was busy. He was twenty years old in 1882, when he first saw Columbia Lake, and had just arrived from Quebec. In a few years he recorded a claim to three hundred and twenty acres on the east shore of the lake where the Columbia begins. This spot was once marked Lakeview. He brought in seed potatoes from Montana by pack train. When this crop was harvested, he wanted to sell it in Golden, a busy C.P.R. construction town. Capt. Armstrong built a bateau from whip-sawed lumber. He then ordered a second hand engine from Montreal which arrived in Golden on the C.P.R.’s first through train to Vancouver. So Armstrong whacked up a hull, installed the engine and on May 8, 1886, launched the first steamboat on the upper Columbia. He named this steamer “The Duchess.”
	Capt. Armstrong headed the Duchess up the Columbia. News of her coming reached Lake Windermere. Five hundred Indians were waiting to welcome the first steam canoe. They helped to haul her over the salmon flats on which she was stranded. When he did arrive in Golden, history claims Armstrong sold the potatoes for one hundred and forty dollars a ton. On its first season the Duchess carried one hundred tons of freight and two hundred and twenty passengers.
	As a result of the the gold strike at Wild Horse, in 1887 camps sprung up daily, that required food and whiskey. Unruly settlers and a threatened Indian outbreak called for the N.W.M.P. So, at Golden, the Duchess loaded the Mounties, and oats for their horses and started for Wild Horse Creek. The Duchess became badly snagged near the Canyon Creek rapids. She sank, however, the passengers escaped but the cargo was lost. The steamship, “Cline,” took the police to Wild Horse Camp. The Cline had been made from a scow and the old engine off a Manitoba steam plow. The Cline sank near Spillimacheen, while a consignment of scarlet tunics, and a deckload of bright yellow oats made a colorful assortment floating down the river. The Cline was never raised. Machinery of the Duchess was recovered and went into a new steamer of the same name. It was built by a skilled Victoria boat builder, Alexander Watson.
	Capt. Armstrong built another light draft boat, the Marion, to use in low water. Financial help came from Lady Adela Cochrane. She and her husband had a placer mine near Canal Flats. Advertisements for Captain Armstrong's Kootenay Mail Line soon appeared in newspapers from east to west, stating that the steamers, Duchess and Marion, would leave Golden every Monday and Thursday for Windermere returning the next day.
	In 1890, Capt. Armstrong, equipped a shallow boat with a primitive engine and small side wheels and christened her the Pert. In 1891, the Upper Columbia Navigation and Tramway Co. was incorporated. The shareholders were the Cochranes, and Honorable Frank Lascelles, son of the Earl of Harewood. He lived at Columbia Lake. This new company laid a tramway from the Golden railroad depot to the steamboat landing on the Columbia River. A stretch of rails was laid across Canal Flats to the Kootenay. Horses were motive power.This company added another steamer, the Gwendoline, named after the daughter of the Earl of Stradbroke. When this boat was nearly finished, Capt. Armstrong decided to complete the construction in Golden. When he got the boat to Canal Flats, he found he could not use the canal. He dismantled the vessel, set the hull on rollers, and hauled her across the flats. At Golden he made her into a staunch ship, took her up the Columbia and put her through the locks that had been repaired.
	American Steamboat Liners were operating out of Libby and Jennings, Montana on the Kootenay River. Armstrong organized an American subsidiary of the Columbia Navigation Co. A fine stern wheeler, christened "Ruth" after Armstrong's daughter, was built at Libby. There was an urgent demand for freight service to supply mining camps and take out the ore. The completion of the B.C. Southern Railway reduced the status of an all Canadian route to the East Kootenay mining camps to that of purely a transportation line. The Duchess and Hyak were kept in operation in 1898. The Pert was sold to Capt. Alexander Blakley. In 1899, H.E. Foster brought the small stern wheeler, the Selkirk, from Kamloops and launched her at Golden. Capt. Blakley rebuilt the Pert and operated her as “the City of Windermere” to tow logs in 1899.
	In 1897, the Upper Columbia Navigation Tramway lost its mail subsidiary but discovered that settlers still persisted in their habit of flagging down a boat to hand over a letter for posting in Golden. To discourage this nuisance, the company printed stamps marked “U. of C. 5 c” in a wreath of red leaves. This was to be affixed to letters in addition to Dominion postage. Only a few were sold, however, when the government notified the company to cease.
	In 1898, the Fort Steele boom faded and the prospectors went to the Klondike. The North Star, carrying $3,000 in whiskey and other necessities, struck rocks in Jennings Canyon. In 1899, after the Gwendoline was wrecked, Capt. Armstrong left for the Yukon to command a steamer on Tagish Lake. He returned in 1900, to find mining reviving in the Upper Columbia. He took a contract to rawhide. Capt. Armstrong bought the wrecked North Star. In June of 1902 Armstrong brought the boat to the Kootenay side of Canal Flats. He and his crew set to preparing the canal that had been abandoned for eight years. The North Star was nine inches too wide for the gates. Armstrong cut her guard rails. He attempted to hack down the gates but failed so he burned them off. Then with a mountain of ore sacks filled with sand, he constructed two dams, providing a lock long enough to float the vessel and strong enough to keep from “breaking the law” - and running wild into the Columbia.
	Armstrong packed a charge of dynamite beneath the forward dam. He took his place in the wheelhouse. When the ship’s boiler began popping off some excess steam, he gave the word, “Let her go.” The North Star churned ahead into the waters of the Columbia Lake, amid splinters of falling debris. The North Star got through to Golden on July 2. After one season of hauling ore and settlers, she was seized by the Canadian Customs at Golden and impounded as an American vessel on which duty had not been paid. She lay fallow at Golden for the next decade, when her hull was cut in half and the pieces used as freight barges.
	The steamboat era was done. Construction work on the Kootenay Central Railway south from Golden through Canal Flats brought only temporary revival of river freighting. Completion of the railroad put an end to that. It was fitting that the last commercial voyage of the steamboat in this part of the river found Capt. Armstrong at the wheel. It was on May 20, 1920, with the vessel, “Nowitka,” he made his last and final trip down the Columbia. On this voyage, the boat tore loose a telephone line that was illegally spanning the river and put the entire system out of order. Capt. Armstrong had been in charge of the first boat and the last. He died three years later in the Vancouver General Hospital.

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Golden and District Historical Society
1302 - 11th Ave. South
Box 992, Golden, B.C. V0A 1H0
Phone & Fax (250)344-5169